Turning The Tides
by Xekstrin
Summary: The nightmares that haunted Ruby were an enemy with no physical form to fight. But Weiss hoped she could at least help turn the tides in the battle they couldn't see. [Weiss/Ruby]


_I woke up and he was screaming  
I'd left him dreaming.  
I roll over and shake him tightly  
And I whisper,  
If they want you, well they're gonna have to fight me  
Oh, fight me._

 _"Night Terror"_ — _Laura Marling_

* * *

The swaying ropes above her creaked, a noise so subtle Weiss only ever learned to hear it in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep. She'd refused to sleep underneath it those first few nights, always going through the effort of dragging her own bunk to the middle of the room just before bed. Ruby's bunk always stayed firmly in place. Eventually Blake and Yang started whining too much about being forced to navigate around it during the middle of the night, so Weiss relented and shifted the bunk back to its proper place. She'd long since come to terms with the fact that anything Ruby built was unlikely to fall apart. The girl was an unparalleled engineer, bordering on savant. Weiss was just glad this genius didn't extend to anything _she_ cared about— like Dust application or fencing— or else the jealousy might have ruined their friendship before it ever had a chance to take root.

Now she stayed up on nights where she had trouble sleeping, listening to those ropes creak, and the sounds of her team mates' breathing.

And then she heard it: a low, dying sound, like an animal in pain.

Every hair on her body stood up, the fear shooting down her spine driving away her drowsy peace and replacing it with wide-awake anxiety. She heard it again, a groan and then a higher pitched whimper. And as she tried to figure out if this was a lucid nightmare or if a lone grimm had somehow wandered into their dorm, she finally understood the noise as a word, repeated over and over again.

" _No, no._.."

The ropes holding up Ruby's bed strained, moaning with unsteady movements. Throwing off the blankets, she tripped out of bed, standing up to look up at the makeshift canopy covering her partner's bunk. The sounds were coming from there.

A fresh surge of rage, instinctual protectiveness, washed away her fear and she scrambled up to Ruby's bed, tearing aside the canopy and finding her partner's flashlight, the one she kept duct-taped to the frame to use for late-night reading. She flicked it on.

Her partner was drenched in blood, smeared across her face and hands.

Ice seized up her stomach.

" _Ruby_!"

At her fearful scream, suddenly everyone was awake. Blake rolled out, weapon already unsheathed and ears pricked for danger; Yang was less graceful, tripping and falling onto the floor with an " _unf"_ and a low string of curses.

Ruby woke up, too. Her eyes popped open, pupils blown wide with fear as she stared around her, not processing anything she saw. Leaning down, Weiss shook her roughly, seeing now that the blood came from a long line of scratches. They marked her chest, her arms, her neck; most were shallow enough to have already started clotting up, but some were still fresh.

When Ruby locked eyes with her, Weiss felt as though her partner were staring straight through her, clear as a pane of glass. Like a nocturnal animal caught in a blast of light, Weiss froze. Then her body lost some of its tension as Ruby looked around her wildly, senses returning.

Ruby looked down at her arms, her blood stained bed sheets.

"O-oh, no," she mumbled, hands palm up in front of her. "Oh, _no no no no—"_

A hand brushed Weiss aside; in two seconds Yang was there, wrapping Ruby's arms up in a towel, shoveling the stained sheets off the bed. Sitting back onto Ruby's mattress, Weiss felt some of the adrenaline drain away at how easily Yang took over, her voice comforting though she was directing it at Ruby.

"Don't look. Don't look at that. It was a dream. You had a bad dream again," she said. "Don't worry."

"But I haven't— I haven't done it in so long," Weiss could hear Ruby say as Yang pulled her sister to her chest, fists bunched up in her red hair. "I thought it was gone. I thought it was gone."

This wasn't something she should be looking at. Trying to be unobtrusive, Weiss slunk back out of Ruby's mattress; neither sister noticed her, or if they did they didn't say anything. She met Blake's eyes when her feet hit the floor, shrugging helplessly at the faunus' questioning eyes.

"Nightmare," she said.

The sheets were still crumpled on the floor. Picking them up, Weiss did what she did best, and logically assumed that someone should rinse them out with cold water before any bloodstains set. Taking it upon herself because it would be a kind thing to do and because she was still so unnerved by the way Ruby had looked at her, she left the room as quick as she could.

The blood scrubbed out pink under the bathroom faucets, the area quiet with most of the faculty and students asleep at this hour.

She didn't know what else to do.

* * *

The next day Ruby wore a long sleeved shirt to bed, humming cheerfully as she got changed. Weiss could only look at her, feeling like she was studying an animal in the wild. Was that it? Was no one going to comment on the claw marks Weiss could still see, brimming over the neckline of Ruby's shirt? Or what kind of nightmares would drive someone to tear themselves apart? Was this really just something that happened often enough in their household that Yang and Ruby had a tried and true method to patch her up afterwards?

Blake certainly wouldn't pry herself out of her shell long enough to ask for more details. She was already asleep, in fact. And Yang was spread out on her own bunk, a magazine held above her head and her legs crossed at the knee. A pair of headphone buds were jammed into her ears; her foot bobbed in time to the beat.

Just as Ruby was about to hoist herself up to her bunk, Weiss stopped her with a word.

"Ruby."

She let it lie flat, no inflection or warmth in her tone, just a command. Her partner paused; then she slowly turned her head to look at Weiss over her shoulder, eyebrows pinched together, expression guarded.

Still, Ruby kept her tone light. "Yeah?"

"Let me see your hands."

Again, it wasn't a request. Pausing, Ruby looked like she was about to blow her off and just clamber up her bed. But then she let go of her bed frame, arms lowering to her sides. She didn't ask why; she just walked over to Weiss and offered both her hands. Weiss took them brusquely, turning them this way and that. The palms were scrubbed clean, obviously, but black specks still clung underneath Ruby's nails, collecting in the grooves between the flesh and the keratin.

"Sit," she said.

Ruby sat. Not joining her just yet, Weiss looked through her bags before returning, telling Ruby to scoot further back so they could sit facing each other. Taking her left hand first, Weiss started filing them, a complete nail care kit opened on her lap. "It's no wonder you look like you got into a fight with a wild cat," she sniffed, an angry frown tugging down the corners of her lips. "Look at these unkempt things. Don't you at least trim them?"

"Uh, well—"

"Nevermind, I can see that you don't. What a disgrace."

Ruby made a face at her. "Well you don't have to do it if you don't want to!"

"I do want to." Weiss gave her hand a squeeze. Just one, tight and short. "Now stop fidgeting."

They didn't talk much after that. It was late, and they were both tired. But Weiss went to bed feeling satisfied.

Whatever haunted Ruby was an enemy with no physical form to fight or defend against, but this at least might help her partner turn the tides.


End file.
